Sweety Akhtar last spoke to her father on 13 October. She was calling from a Saudi prison, but mentioned nothing about a death sentence. Earlier, she had told her family that she might be released within two months. Just a day after the call, Saudi Arabia executed her.
Nazrul Islam's family was blindsided in much the same way. The 22-year-old cleaner had spoken to them from prison every Sunday. His father had borrowed Tk7 lakh to send him to Saudi Arabia in 2022. More than three years after his arrest, the family learnt from the media that he had been executed on 14 October.
Saudi authorities reportedly did not notify the Bangladesh Embassy in Riyadh or the Consulate General in Jeddah of the death sentences or executions. The families knew their relatives were in prison but apparently did not know they were facing death. A Saudi prisoner list received by the consulate on 30 September — two weeks before the executions — named Nazrul and Sweety without mentioning death sentences.
The incident leaves us with two questions: Why did Riyadh not inform Dhaka? And why did Dhaka not have a system capable of independently tracking two citizens imprisoned for more than three years?
The opacity extends beyond notification.
According to a memo sent by the Bangladesh Consulate General in Jeddah to the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment on 18 October, Nazrul was detained on 1 August 2023 under Saudi Arabia's cybercrime law, while Sweety was detained the following day over an adultery allegation.
Yet the Saudi Interior Ministry later said both had been convicted of an "immoral act" inside a mosque in Mecca, according to the memo.
The letter does not reconcile those accounts. Nor does it establish whether the two had legal representation or interpreters during their trials. Saudi courts may provide interpreting assistance, but defendants cannot select their interpreters under the arrangement described by the consulate.
The families reject or question the allegations. Their accounts cannot independently establish what happened. But that is precisely why access to the judgments, evidence and trial records matters. A process opaque to the defendants' families, home government and wider public cannot be meaningfully scrutinised after the sentence has been carried out.
Barrister Sara Hossain, honorary executive director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, rejects the suggestion that a mission's responsibility begins only when a detainee's family submits a formal request.
"The consular defence that the embassy can act only if a migrant's family files a petition is legally untenable," she said.
Once a Bangladeshi is detained abroad, Hossain argued, the state has a responsibility to establish contact, ascertain the charges and legal status, facilitate access to counsel and ensure that the detainee can communicate with their family. Migrant workers require an additional layer of protection because many leave Bangladesh without knowing the legal risks they may face or where to seek help after arrest.
"A state's duty of protection travels with its people," she said. "Migrant workers are not commodities being exported. They are citizens with fundamental rights."
Human-rights activist Nur Khan Liton accepts that foreign nationals are subject to the laws of the country in which they live. But jurisdiction, he argues, does not excuse diplomatic darkness.
"A state can always intervene on humanitarian grounds, pursue high-level bilateral dialogue, and seek clemency," he said. "How could we not even be informed?"
The consulate claims neither family contacted it or requested legal help. Technically, that may explain why no case file was opened from the Bangladeshi side. Institutionally, it is a remarkably thin defence. Consular protection cannot depend entirely on poor, rural families understanding foreign criminal procedure, identifying the correct mission and filing the correct application.
The consular defence that the embassy can act only if a migrant's family files a petition is legally untenable. A state's duty of protection travels with its people. Migrant workers are not commodities being exported. They are citizens with fundamental rights.
Barrister Sara Hossain, honorary executive director, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust
A state that knows hundreds of its citizens are imprisoned should not wait for a formal request before asking which of them may lose their lives.
Sara Hossain said the missing information affects whether the two could understand the proceedings, challenge the allegations, or seek clemency before their sentences became irreversible.
"Early legal representation is a lifeline," she said. "Once someone is arrested and formally accused, prompt and unhindered access to legal defence becomes indispensable."
'Now we will see where the gap was'
The official response after the executions deepened the unease.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir described the incident as disappointing and acknowledged a "gap" in information-sharing and diplomatic procedure. Asked about compensation, he said the sentences had already been carried out and that the government would now investigate where the lapse occurred.
The initial responses from the foreign-policy leadership have been criticised as too light for the gravity of the event. Dhaka summoned the Saudi ambassador and sought an explanation. The consulate sent a "note verbale" requesting the judgments and details of the proceedings. Those are necessary diplomatic steps. But they began only after two citizens were dead.
Asif Shahan, professor of Development Studies at Dhaka University, sees this less as an isolated absence of political will than as a structural inability within Bangladesh's governance framework.
"It's a shame that elected officials who are in charge of the ministry have limited ideas about diplomacy and negotiation," he said, adding that embassies often fail to keep track of incidents affecting Bangladeshis abroad.
For Shahan, the issue is not whether Bangladesh can overpower a more influential state. It cannot. The issue is whether it possesses the professional machinery to insist on agreed procedures, obtain information early and negotiate before a case becomes irreversible.
"When your citizen is facing trial, you must get that information in time, so that you can negotiate," he said. "These are the principles that must be upheld, and on these, a country can't compromise."
The price of diplomatic dependence
Saudi Arabia is one of Bangladesh's most important labour markets and remittance sources. That dependence creates a stark asymmetry. Bangladesh needs Saudi jobs, remittance and bilateral goodwill. Saudi Arabia does not depend on Bangladesh to the same degree.
But economic dependence does not automatically require diplomatic submission.
Asif Shahan argued that other labour-sending countries have negotiated with Saudi Arabia in comparable cases and secured reduced punishments. Remittance reliance may narrow Bangladesh's room for manoeuvre, but it does not eliminate it.
Just last week, while Bangladesh was left in the dark about its citizens, the Saudi Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a Sri Lankan national, Anojan Sivarasa. Sivarasa, an expatriate engineer, had been sentenced to death over a Facebook post that was deemed blasphemous for allegedly insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
Sri Lankan diplomats and officials engaged in what was described as "patient diplomacy" and filed a high-level legal appeal. While he was still fined and sentenced to prison, Sri Lanka's intervention successfully forced the Saudi legal system to reconsider and set aside the execution.
"It's more about professional capacity and utilising it properly," Asif Shahan said. "We are failing in that."
Shariful Hasan, associate director of BRAC's Migration Programme and Youth Platform, puts the argument more bluntly. Saudi authorities act as they do, he says, because they do not expect Bangladesh to mount a serious response.
He asked whether Riyadh would have proceeded so readily had the condemned prisoners been citizens of a state known to retaliate diplomatically. His comparison is rhetorical, not proof of how any particular case would have ended. But it identifies the central currency of consular protection: the host government's expectation that another state is watching.
Sara Hossain points to the execution of Filipina domestic worker Flor Contemplacion in Singapore, which provoked national outrage in the Philippines and helped drive stronger institutions and round-the-clock legal-assistance mechanisms for overseas workers.
Her point is not that the cases are identical, but that a migrant worker's death can produce institutional reform — if the sending state treats it as a systemic failure rather than an isolated diplomatic embarrassment.
When foreign power enters domestic policing
The imbalance has also appeared in reverse.
During the interim government, the detention of model Meghna Alam by Detective Branch police under the Special Powers Act — allegedly following pressure connected to the Saudi ambassador — raised questions about whether Bangladesh's security apparatus could be mobilised against a citizen to accommodate a foreign diplomatic interest.
Asif Shahan draws the same line across both cases.
Bangladesh must carefully manage relations with powerful states, but agreed procedures cannot become optional. Just as Saudi Arabia should notify Dhaka when a Bangladeshi faces grave criminal proceedings, Bangladesh must ensure that its own agencies act through law — not diplomatic preference — when a foreign mission complains about a citizen.
Otherwise, the asymmetry becomes complete: Abroad, Bangladesh cannot activate the state to protect its citizens; at home, foreign influence appears capable of activating it against them.
What is a Bangladeshi passport worth?
At least 19 Bangladeshis were documented as executed in Saudi Arabia across three reporting periods since 2010: 16 between 2010 and 2021, one in 2024 and two in October 2026. The total may be incomplete because no consolidated figure is available for every year.
The wider Saudi execution system is extensive. A joint Reprieve and European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights report documented 1,243 executions between 2010 and 2021, of which 490 — around 39% — were foreign nationals. ESOHR recorded 345 executions in 2024, including 138 foreigners. Human Rights Watch reported a record 356 executions in 2025.
These numbers should have made consular vigilance routine. Instead, Bangladesh's mission received a list containing two names, failed to see the danger because the sentences were omitted, and learnt the truth through Saudi media.
Most of all, there must be consequences when the system fails.
Asif Shahan warned that repeated failure damages bureaucratic morale, public trust and even perceptions of political legitimacy. The message sent down the administrative chain is clear: losing track of an impoverished migrant worker carries little cost.
Sara Hossain said the Vienna Convention creates clear consular-notification duties, including informing detained foreign nationals of their right to contact their consulate and notifying the mission without delay when that assistance is requested.